The Distance Between Us
by JulesSC
Summary: NM AU. It has been exactly a year since Edward left. She runs across Alice and Emmett, half-mad. Alice figures out something is wrong when she could see the 'Edward hallucination'Bella keeps having, and none of the humans can. EXB.
1. The Blurry Lines of Reality

The Distance Between Us

Summary: NM AU. It has been exactly a year since Edward left. Bella's been driving aimlessly for almost as long. Now, temporarily in NY, she runs across Alice and Jasper, half-mad. Alice figures out something is wrong when she could see the 'Edward hallucination' Bella keeps having, and none of the humans can. EXB.

A/N: This is a very short story, just 3-4 chapters long, in fact. I'm not going to go into details of 'what-happens-after-they-reunite', just what's going on with Edward and Bella and how they reunite. The 'after' part has been done so many times. I think we all know what would happen - they talk, she discovers he loves her, he realizes that he's been an idiot, she's changed, they live happily ever after. I just don't want to get into that for this story.

No matter how short this story is going to be, I sincerely hope you guys enjoy it, though. This popped at me out of nowhere, and I enjoyed writing it. Please leave me a line or two, just to tell me what you think. It doesn't even have to be about this story - something like 'there's a bird chirping outside my window' would do just fine. Really. I'm that weirdly desperate.

P.S. I swear I'm not insane, but the men in white coats won't believe me…

Disclaimer: SM owns it all.

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Bella: The Blurry Lines of Reality

It has been exactly a year since he had left me. I'd celebrated my nineteenth birthday just two weeks ago. Of course, it hadn't been much of a celebration. If I'd despised my birthday before when I was a kid who cringed at the thought of birthday parties my mother threw, or when Edward was around and I'd been horrified at the thought of getting older when he stayed the same…Well, I hated birthdays even more now.

I was given the sweet reprieve of forgetting my birthday even existed when I was awake. After all, who was there to remind me?

Just four months after Edward had left me, four months that I'd awoken from my comatose state and begun actually remembering the day that went by instead of walking around like the living dead, I'd taken the money from my college fund out of the bank, purchased a second hand '67 Chevy Impala and had taken off from Forks.

I hadn't said anything to Charlie. In fact, this was all done in the short period of six hours on a gloomy Friday morning.

Charlie had already left for work when I'd left, though he'd checked up on me three times since he woke up. All three times had been awkward and I really couldn't have pretended to be asleep because he'd always come right up to my bed, shake me awake and ask if I needed anything.

_It had all started about four months after he had left me. There I was, in the middle of World History class, and right as Mr. Jenkins was bringing up Hiroshima, he showed up._

_At first, I was just startled into shock. I just sat there, staring at him with my mouth open, my eyes filled with tears. He was right there, right in front of the class, with dirt covered dark washed jeans and a black button down shirt that look crinkled and messy. His hair was as unruly as I remembered it to be, but the bronze was darker, almost a dark brown. I realized that his hair, too, was covered in dirt and soot. Just what had he been doing before he'd appeared? And where had he appeared from?_

_He looked so confused, looking around the classroom like he had no idea how he got there or where 'there' was. Then his eyes landed on me, and I gasped._

_Firstly, because his eyes weren't the beautiful topaz I loved, but a dark obsidian color that I adored as well. But it was as if he hadn't hunted for months. I could see the primal animal just struggling to be let free. Why had he let himself go so long without hunting?_

_Secondly, because no matter what color his eyes were, they were still Edward's eyes. They held the same importance to me. So beautiful, so haunted, so mesmerizing._

_The tears in my eyes started to fill up even more, blurring my vision. I blinked them away quickly, not wanting to mar my sight of him._

_I watched as his dark eyes widened almost comically - hell, I would have laughed if I weren't so in pain - and his perfect, soft-looking lavender lips form an 'O' shape. "Bella?" he whispered, and somehow, through some sort of miracle, I heard him though he was standing at the very front of the classroom._

_I didn't know why no one was reacting._

_He was Edward Cullen, one of the infamous Cullens that had the whole town gossiping over even after being in Forks for three years, the guy who had packed up and moved with his entire family for months now, and he'd just suddenly showed up. You would think everyone would be shocked. Not as stunned as me - frozen in my seat while hyperventilating on the inside - but at least there would be hushed whispers and wide-eyed glances between the inhumanly beautiful man and the plain, pathetic ex he'd left behind._

_Why was no one reacting to him? I knew he had to be real. He couldn't have been my imagination. For one, my imagination was very rarely this vivid, this…Solid. Besides, he looked just as shocked as I was to be here, like he hadn't even realized he'd come all the way back to Forks from wherever he'd been at._

_My hallucinations usually involved a better-fed Edward, anyway, and this one looked like he hadn't hunted for weeks._

"_Bella?" he said again, taking a step towards me._

_I inhaled sharply, my hand flitting to my chest. The sound of his voice had never been more distinct than it was right now. The reverent tenor of his voice, the same way he had sounded when he had once loved me. The smooth, angelic sound that no human - or supernatural creature, for that matter - could compare to. The beautiful, musical quality of it…It was as if he was really here._

"_Bella," I heard again, only this time, it wasn't Edward's beautiful voice, nor was it male. I turned my head to see Angela, her brows creased with worry as she looked at me. "Are you alright?" her eyes strayed to the hand on my chest, and my arm wrapped around my middle._

_I stared at her incredulously. "How can you ask me that?" I asked, and my voice sounded a little harsh even to my ears. "Is this some kind of a joke?"_

_She looked puzzled, which strangely angered me. Why was she acting like this was no big deal? Why was she acting like the love of my life, the very reason for my existence, wasn't standing just five feet away from us?_

"_Bella, what are you talking about?" she asked, speaking slowly as if she were talking to a mentally slow person. "Are you feeling sick? Do you need to go home?"_

_I opened my mouth to answer her - I didn't know what I was going to say, but I thought of just going with the flow. Maybe I could question her sanity. Or maybe it was my sanity that needed to be checked._

_Before I had the chance to reply, though, Edward had stolen my attention yet again. "Is it really you?" he asked, and his voice cracked at the end. "Am I really here? How can that be, though? I never left…Maybe I'd died and gone to heaven. It's only fit that you're here. After all, what is heaven without you?"_

_His dark eyes trailed over my face, tracing over every outline as if he were memorizing me. He had stepped closer, taking slow, human-paced steps. "You look so beautiful," he breathed, and I gasped yet again when I realized that I could smell the icy, sweet breath of his fanning over my face. "Tired, but beautiful. I wasn't aware you could get tired in heaven."_

_I was staring at him, dumbfounded. My mind was so jumbled up, incapable of forming rational thoughts. Here he was, after months away from me, and he was so amazingly breathtaking, so wonderful…_

Heaven!_ Some small, still coherent part of my mind wandered._

_I finally gained enough courage, enough air in my lungs, to breathe properly and ask, "Heaven? Edward, what are you talking about?"_

_He seemed confused, though his dark eyes lit up a little when I spoke. I realized that it was the first time I'd spoken to him since he'd arrived out of nowhere._

"_Bella, who are you talking to?" Angela asked, and instead of just concern on her face, there was panic there, too. Very strong, very potent panic. Fear radiated from her eyes._

_I barely glanced her way as I answered. "Edward, Angela. Who else?" I knew I sounded irritated._

_She gave me a weird look. "Bella, there's no one there," she spoke softly, soothingly, as if trying to calm an unstable woman._

_No. Not again. You can't take him away from me again. He's right there. I know he is._

"_Why are you lying to me?" I asked her, turning wide, tear-filled eyes to her. "He's right there, Angela. I can see him."_

"_Bella…" her voice was so filled with sympathy. It was _painful_._

_She reached out to touch my arm but I jerked away from her before she could. "No!" I practically yelled. If the people surrounding us hadn't already started staring at us because of my sudden proclamation that Edward was in the room, they were certainly staring now._

"_Bella," Edward whispered, and his eyes were filled with confusion. "Why are we here? Why are they here? If this is heaven, shouldn't it just be the two of us?"_

_The teacher, Mr. Jenkins, stopped teaching, his attention drawn to me, as well. "Ms. Swan," he said, and though I knew he was trying to be stern, there was a sort of tired wariness to his tone. Everyone in this town had known all about my breakdown and my catatonic state, of course. "Is there something you and Ms. Weber would like to share with the rest of the class?"_

_Edward was ignoring the teacher and Angela, and the students who were just now starting to whisper. In fact, he acted as if he hadn't even heard them. "I imagined pearly gates…"_

"_Sir, I think Bella's not feeling very well," Angela answered for me. "Maybe I should take her to the nurse's office?"_

_Edward was suddenly right in front of me. I gasped, standing up slowly, my entire body trembling. What if he didn't want me still? Why would he have changed his mind. I had been nothing but a distraction to him - something remotely interesting to fill up his time. After all, with a whole eternity stretched out in front of him…He must've been bored._

_A sharp pain stabbed my in the chest, that was almost instantly soothed for the temporary being when Edward raised his hand. Gently, very gently, he placed the back of his hand on my cheek, and caressed my skin softly. "But as long as you're with me, I'll take heaven or hell in any form at all," he told me in a low voice, his normally smooth voice rougher than usual - but not as rough as a human. He was far too extraordinary to be anything like a human._

"_I don't understand," I spoke up in a quiet voice, unable to tear my eyes away from his oh-so-gorgeous face. "How are you here?"_

_He frowned, then. "I don't know," he admitted. "I was…Resting," I noticed him hesitating, and the wince that followed and felt my heart clenched painfully. 'Resting'. What did that mean? Vampires never rested. Unless he was 'resting' with his new distraction? Was that it? Had he moved on from me? Was his new distraction keeping him so occupied, he couldn't hunt?_

_No. Don't think about this, Bella. Don't think about the insanely beautiful vampire he could be in love with now. Don't go there. Try and ignore the thoughts. You don't need to break down in front of him._

_A part of me wanted to listen to that inner voice, to be strong and not show just how devastated I was in front of Edward. But mostly, I just wanted him to come home to me._

"_Ms. Swan," the teacher spoke again, and I noticed that this time, the entire classroom had gone silent. Every single pair of eyes were watching me, wary and tensed as if I were some sort of a ticking time bomb just ready to explode. "Who are you talking to?"_

_I frowned at him. For Angela to do this was cruel enough, and confusing enough. Why was the teacher involved in this? What was the purpose, anyway? This doesn't make any sense._

"_Edward," I said, rather impatiently. "I'm talking to Edward. He's standing right here. Why are all of you acting like he's not?"_

"_Bella," Angela called out urgently, tugging at my hand. "He's not here, Bella. You're…Seeing things. Bella, please…I think we should get her to the doctor's."_

_I ripped my hand away from Angela. "What is wrong with you!" I demanded angrily, my eyes flashing. "Why do you keep saying that! He's right here! He's right here!"_

_I turned to point to where he was just standing less than a foot away from me. My eyes landed on the suddenly empty space, my heart thudding erratically. "Where is he?" I asked aloud, more to myself. "He was right here. Where did he go?"_

_I started to search the entire classroom, my eyes moving frantically in tandem to my speeding heartbeat. "Did he leave?" I asked, and absolutely hated how my voice broke at the end._

"_Bella, come on," Angela said, standing up as well._

_I shook my head, moving away from her to look around the room. "_No!_" I protested loudly. "He was right there, Angela! I have to look for him. He has to be around here somewhere."_

_My gaze found the green foliage outside the window of the classroom. He could be outside, I thought to myself. Not saying another word to Angela or Mr. Jenkins or anyone else, I made for the door, walking purposefully._

"_Bella! Bella!" Angela was calling for me, and I heard her making hurried excuses to the teacher, and the pounding of feet rushing towards me._

_Two hands grabbed my by the upper arms, but they were too warm. They weren't ice cold at all, and it didn't feel right._

"_Let go of me!" I screamed, struggling against this person's hold. They didn't let go, so I thrashed harder, finally managing to escape after my foot struck his or her leg._

"_Mike, let her go already!" Angela was screaming, panic so clear in her voice. I felt bad for making her worry but I had more important things to worry about. Edward always took the precedence over everything else._

_The moment Mike let go of me, I sprinted for the school's front entrance. I could hear voices calling my name, calling me back, following me. But they weren't the right voice, wasn't the one I was looking to hear again. So I ignored all of that, my entire body focused on just getting to the woods surrounding the school._

_He had to be in there. I knew it. He had to be._

_Even when I was so determined, even on the most important day of my life, I managed to trip. I fell over my own feet, tripped over branches and leaves and pebbles as I ran as fast as I could towards the woods._

"_Edward!" I screamed for him. "Edward, where are you! Edward!"_

I'd ran for almost an hour, screaming until I was hoarse, running until I was so tired that I'd fallen to my knees, my trembling legs giving out underneath me, searching until I was heartbroken all over again.

I'd gone so far and so deep into the woods that the others had lagged behind. Charlie was called in and they'd had another search party to look for me. It was Jared Mahan who found me this time - a friend of Sam Uley, the man who had found me the time before. He had been as disapproving and as pitying as Sam had been, and it had killed me.

I'd stayed home three days after that, with Charlie keeping constant vigilance.

And every day, Edward would appear to me, seemingly materializing out of thin air. He would stay with me sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours. On the third day, he even stayed a full whole day. He would talk to me about how confused he was, how his own mind was playing tricks on him - first he was back in whatever place he was in, then he was with me.

I'd decided that he was, in fact, a hallucination. It goes to show just how crazy I was that my own hallucination was having a hallucination.

If the real Edward were here, I'd tell him how grateful he should be that he couldn't be inside my dark, twisted mind.

On that third day, I'd practically pushed Charlie out the door, telling him that I was just going to rest and take care of my 'headache' before going back to school the next day. He believed me, even told me it was okay to go to Port Angeles if I wanted.

As soon as he was gone, I'd grabbed my duffel, packed a few clothes, my Wuthering Heights book that was falling apart at the seams, and the emergency cash I'd had stashed from summers working part-time jobs in Phoenix, and at Newton's the summer Edward and the Cullens were still around in Forks. I had nothing of his that I could take with me, as a memory, and perhaps that was a good thing - I was slowly going crazy, and I just needed to get away.

I'd taken the bus to Port Angeles, leaving my red truck behind after an affectionate pat on its bulbous cap. I'd headed straight for the bank and had extracted the money my mother had placed in my account, every last bit of it. I didn't have much, but I did have enough to buy a second hand '67 Impala from a dealer I was familiar with - Charlie had taken me there once or twice before when I was younger and had come to stay a few weeks with him over the summer, whenever he'd even contemplated getting another car that wasn't his police cruiser. He never went through with it but I knew that the cars there were quite affordable and in my price range.

I still had a few hundred bucks left after that and kept my wallet tightly closed for the road.

That was the day that I'd gone on my impromptu road trip.

Now, nearly a year later, I was convinced that I'd gone completely insane. I'd been traveling for a whole year, living like some sort of cracked human nomad. I'd stay a night or two in motels, then continue driving. I'd had to get odd jobs here and there, as a waitress in diners or small cafes or a clerk…Anything that didn't require much of a resume - I didn't think 'I'm a high school dropout who ran away from home' was very impressive. I needed the money since the few hundred I had left after purchasing the Impala didn't last me very long. I was thrifty, of course, but still…It wasn't going to last forever.

I hadn't contacted my parents since I'd left home. There had been the hastily written note I'd left for Charlie on the kitchen counter, and the short two-sentenced e-mail I'd left my mother just the night before, stating that I was doing fine and was just staying home for a few days recovering from a headache - she didn't know about my breakdown in class or my escapade into the woods. I'd begged Charlie not to tell her.

I knew they had to have been worried, but I couldn't bring myself to call or write. I was ashamed of how I'd acted, ashamed how I was living, and ashamed by the fact that I knew for certain I'd never recover from Edward's abandonment.

Maybe, if I left for long enough, if I'd been gone for a long enough time, they'd start to move on with their lives. They deserved that, to live a better, worry-free life without their heartbroken, crazy daughter around. Charlie _especially_ deserved that, considering how he had suffered through my months of depression helplessly.

I was now in beautiful Ithaca, New York. It was autumn here, with beautiful golden leaves and still relatively summer-like weather. Children were back in school, and from the park I sat at all day, I could see how happy they were as they played with their friends after school.

_Yeah, we'll see how happy you'll be once _you_ get _your_ heart broken_, I thought bitterly and was startled yet again by how cynical I'd become.

"They look so happy," 'Edward' sighed, appearing right next to me on the bench I'd been sitting at for the past five hours. "I wanted you to have this, you know?"

I ignored him, as I sometimes did. Very rarely I didn't indulge in my hallucinations and fantasies of him. If I was insane, I might as well enjoy whatever I could from it. But I knew from past experience that people didn't like it when there was a young woman looking all tattered and torn, talking to herself out in public. I tended to keep the discussions and replies for when I was alone.

Edward didn't mind anymore. He had been hurt the first time I'd ignored him, but I'd explained when I'd reached the comfort of the inside of my Impala, and he'd understood. I had been worried that he would disappear for good once I'd ignored him, and had stressed myself out until I felt nearly dizzy, but he'd come back after a few hours and I'd been given the chance to explain to the figment of my imagination why I hadn't replied to him in public.

I knew it sounded crazy, but I wouldn't give my Edward hallucination up for anything.

With him, it was as if…It was as if he still cared. I could hear the angry, stressed tone of his voice whenever I was doing something dangerous - like applying for a job as a bartender at a partially shady bar in LA once. Or when I'd gone bungee jumping a few months back.

And when I was alone, he would tell me the things he loved about me. At night, he would hum my lullaby for me - and God, was his voice still as glorious as I remembered. More, in fact.

It was easy to pretend, even for little, short bursts of time, that he was the real Edward, and that he loved me.

Pretending that he loved me gave me just a tiny bit of sanity left. It gave me just a little strength to go about my aimless life, to carry on ahead to the next day.

"I keep thinking," Edward was saying. "How strange it is that you're upset…If I were dreaming of you, imagining you - or even if we're in heaven, though I don't think that anymore because what God would allow a monster like me inside the pearly gates of eternity? - I would've thought that you'd be happier. I just don't understand any of it."

He sighed heavily again.

One of the things I'd noticed about my Edward hallucinations was that the things he said about heaven, or the afterlife in general or even the reason why he was here (that _he_ was the one hallucinating, not me) never made any sense. I'd asked before, and we'd just go about a roundabout discussion, so I'd stopped asking.

Now I merely pretended as if his confusing remarks made sense to me.

We stayed on the bench, just people watching, for the next few hours. Edward flickered in and out of focus, as though he was on bad cable or something. This happened sometimes. I didn't particularly wanted to question why my hallucinations sometimes looked as though it was an old show on a crappy TV getting bad reception. I'd panicked the first few times this had happened but now I was calm about it - Edward, at least this one, would always return to me.

"I think you're fading," Edward said, frowning at me. He usually said that whenever he was the one who started to fade. I wondered what he saw through his eyes when this occurs. _Yes, Bella, because hallucinations often have 20/20 eyesight and sane minds_.

Edward faded completely from my sight, but that was okay. I knew he'd be back soon and, really, I had all day to wait for him. All of my life, even.

I'd already quit my job yesterday as a receptionist at a small two-person advertising company. I'd saved up enough money to sustain me for the next few weeks on the road, three if I was especially thrifty - constantly moving for the past year had given me enough experience to estimate these things quite accurately. I was just taking a day off, just to relax.

Well, 'relax' as much as I could, anyway. Sometimes it felt like I hadn't slept at all in the past year, as if my mind went somewhere else when I was asleep…It was the strangest thing. There were permanent purple bruises underneath my eyes now, never fading, like I was one of _them_. It left me feeling unsatisfied when I woke up, so tired all the time. This had been happening since my Edward hallucinations first started.

Wasn't that just the oddest thing?

"Bella?" I heard, and my head snapped up. I would know that tinkling, feminine voice anywhere. I stared at the apparition before me in disbelief.

Not only Alice, but Emmett too, was standing a few feet in front of me, both looking at me with wide, incredulous eyes.

I took a moment to observe them. They look far better than my Edward apparition. Alice was dressed impeccably and her short spiky hair was styled into two cute pigtails. Emmett looked as huge and menacing as he had the first time I'd ever saw him, but he wore a huge smile. The 'teddy bear grin' as I'd called it in my head a few times.

Their eyes were both a healthy golden honey, and the bruises underneath their eyes were practically non-existent. Compared to my Edward hallucination, compared to _me_ even, they were in much better condition. They looked like they always did back at Forks, always careful to be fully fed around me and the other humans.

I simply gazed speechlessly at Alice and Emmett, short bursts of pain shooting through my chest making me realize just how much I missed them. I'd managed to shove it all to the back of my mind and heart, too focused on my grief at the loss of Edward, but I'd lost them too and it was just too much to handle all at once.

"Bella, you're in Ithaca?" Alice said, a slow smile spreading across her lips. I soaked in the sound of her perfect voice, wondering yet again how she sounded like she was singing when she spoke and had the tinkling of bells as background music at the same time. "Are you here for college?"

_That_ broke me out of me spell. "College," I snorted, scoffing at the mere idea. As if _that_ were even possible for me now.

"What, one hallucination isn't enough? I need more?" I shook my head, standing up and walking past them. I didn't have to stay here - Edward would show up wherever I was, as if he had a built in radar for me.

If Alice and Emmett were anything like my hallucination of their brother, then they'd follow me everywhere I went, return to me every day. A part of me was joyous, celebrating. Another part of me cried in heartache. When would it all stop? When would my heart be healed again? When would _I_ be healed?

I wanted to get away from them as much as I wanted to immerse myself in them. It was an odd sort of conflict, but one I was familiar with. After all, you couldn't spend a year of your life being completely insane, imagining the one man you were in love with everywhere you go, without having some sort of internal conflict.

Unfortunately for me - or, was it 'fortunately'? It was hard to tell anymore - my Alice and Emmett apparitions weren't giving up on me easily. I had to snort at that. Of course they wouldn't. There was just something about Cullen hallucinations. They were irritatingly persistent.

"Wait, Bella," Alice called out, jogging at a human pace and 'catching up' to me. I had no idea why she couldn't just use her vampire speed the way my Edward hallucination did. It wasn't like anyone could see her.

I was determined to ignore her - she would just have to learn, if she was going to stick around, that I wouldn't entertain her when we were in public. There was just so much public humiliation that a girl could take. Besides, getting thrown in jail for being crazy would mess up my plan to leave town.

I gasped, shocked, when I felt her ice cold hand grasp my much warmer, much human one. I halted my movements and spun around to face her, shock covering my features.

'Edward' had touched me before, of course. Light touches that were barely there, butterfly caresses. I could feel his cool touch if I closed my eyes, or if I was tired enough. But this…Alice's fingers wrapped around my wrist were firm, as though she was really there with me. She felt like she did back in Forks, when we'd hold hands or when she'd restrain me from escaping her crazed plans to go shopping.

Tears started to cloud my vision.

"Oh, God, I've really gone insane this time," I blurted out, tears spilling hotly onto my cheeks.

Emmett frowned at me. "What the hell are you talking about!" he demanded in a bewildered tone. "And what did you mean by 'hallucinations'?"

I yanked my hand away from Alice's grip, my wrist only slightly hurting. "Let go of me!" I hissed angrily, causing her to recoil in shock. People passing by me stared for just a second longer, or they did a double take when they saw me, but I no longer cared.

Did any of them know how _damn exhausting_ it was to be this broken?

"You are not real. You are not real!"

"Bella!" Alice whispered her shout, her hands wrapped gently around my upper arms, her fingers almost overlapping due to how thin I'd become over the past year, and she started to shake me. "Stop that. I'm real, and Emmett's real. We're all real here. You're being…"

She trailed off, then, her words slowing down and her eyes growing wide as they focused on the spot just two inches from my right.

I turned my head and my suspicions of having lost my mind was just reiterated. There, glaring menacingly at Alice, was my beautiful hallucination of Edward.

"…Crazy," Alice finished her sentence, her tone faint and an incredulous expression marring her perfect face.

"What are you doing?" Edward demanded, reaching out as though to push her away from me. Her hands fell from my body before he could touch her, and she stepped back, bumping into Emmett, in her shock. "Don't hurt her."

"What the hell," Emmett whispered. He, too, was staring at his brother.

I didn't know why they were all looking so shocked to see each other. If they were all hallucinations, shouldn't they have had…I don't know, meetings or something before they came to me? They were figments of my imagination. They should be calm and relaxed and just…Happy. Clearly, I needed a better imagination.

Edward turned to me, then, a frown on his beautiful face. "Bella…Where did they come from?"

I snorted. "Hell if I know," I muttered.

A woman passing by me, a blonde woman in her early forties, the hand of a little girl bearing striking resemblance to her clutched in her hand, eyed me warily as she noticed me speaking to the spot where Edward was. To her, I knew, that spot was empty.

I glared at her. "Nothin' to see here, lady!" I snarled at her, causing her to jump and scurry away, her frightened daughter being dragged away by her as she did so. "Yeah, just get lost! That's it, hurry along now!"

Emmett, despite being confused as hell, shot me a little grin. "Never pegged you for the crazy street lady, Bells," he told me, chuckling slightly. "It kinda suits you."

I rolled my eyes and Edward snarled at his brother, but Alice ignored all three of us. She had a contemplative frown on her face as she stared at me, her eyes flickering between me and her brother and back again.

"The humans can't see him," she said suddenly, turning to Emmett.

Emmett raised his eyebrows. "But Bella…"

Alice shook her head, impatient. "The other humans," she clarified. "We can see him and Bella can see him, but he…I don't think he's really here."

"If he's not here, then why can we see him?"

"I don't know," Alice admitted, her tone frustrated. "We'll have to contact Carlisle. This is obviously not normal."

Emmett snorted derisively. "Ya think?" he retorted sarcastically.

Alice glared at him but didn't comment. "Where's Edward now?" she asked, closing her eyes briefly. I suspected she was trying to find the real Edward through her visions. "I think he's left Mexico a few months ago…"

Well, sure. Why wouldn't Edward be in Mexico with some beautiful, exotic Spanish vampire?

The tear in my heart, so unbelievably deep and so unbelievably long, tore another inch. My heart started beating in erratic beats, and my breath came in short spurts. I knew better than to try and calm myself - nothing ever worked.

'Edward', however, noticed my labored breathing. "Love?" he called out, another stab to my heart. "What's wrong? You're so pale…"

I felt the throbbing in my head, a sure sign that a large migraine was headed my way. Three different hallucinations, three different thorns in my side. I wondered what would happen when a hallucination of Rosalie inevitably popped up. Strangely enough, I was looking forward to her sneers and her harsh comments. It would bring me a sense of normalcy.

Pressing my fingertips to my forehead, I turned away from the three vampires who weren't even there, making my way to where I'd parked my Impala. I'd had enough fresh air for the day. I wanted to just head back to the ratty motel I was staying at, get a couple of hours of sleep, and get myself ready to hit the road again tomorrow.

"Bella! Where are you going?" Alice called after me, her voice sounding panicked. She shouldn't be worried. Just like Edward, she would always come back to me. If she just _tried_, we would always be together. "Bella!"

I could feel them, all three of them, following after me, hear them as they spoke. "She's probably headed to her room," Edward said sagely. "She needs to rest for tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Emmett questioned. "What's tomorrow?"

I didn't turn around, didn't watch their faces as they conversed, didn't even follow their conversation. Once I had reached the parking lot, and found my Impala, I slid my key into the car lock, slipping inside.

'Edward' had been right about one thing - I did need to get some rest. A lot of rest. I wanted to have a semi-clear head while I drove. I couldn't afford another trip to the mechanic's.

I drove to a highway motel, with a faded sign that read 'The Falls Motel'. It was a single story building with just a handful of rooms, and I was pretty sure nothing about it was sanitary. But beggars couldn't be choosers. The man at the check-in, with his typically clichéd stained undershirt and greasy sandwich, didn't even look up as I entered the motel and walked past him, just flipped through whatever magazine he was reading.

I had counted on getting some peace and quiet when I entered the room I paid for. Edward wasn't with me, so I assumed he had left to…Well, to do whatever hallucinations did whenever they weren't haunting those they haunted. I wanted to just…Not sleep. Sleep brought with it nightmares and heart-wrenching dreams of when I still had things to dream about. I wanted to lay in bed, keep my eyes open and my mind blissfully blank.

That, I quickly realize, was not going to happen.

My Alice illusion and my Emmett illusion were in my room. Alice was sitting at the edge of the small bed, legs crossed and hands folded delicately on her lap. Emmett was staring at the old cartons of food I had on the small round table I'd used to eat my meals at these past couple of weeks.

"It smells like something died in here, you know that, right?" was the first thing Emmett said to me as I closed the door.

"Something probably did," I replied automatically before shaking my head, closing my eyes. "I'm not talking to you," I said, directing this at both of the Cullen illusions in my room. "You're not real and I'm not talking to you."

Alice sighed exasperatedly and rolled her eyes. "Isabella, we're real, okay?" she didn't sound like she had much patience for this.

I scoffed at that. "You're not a very good hallucination," I informed her. "Alice is much more cheerful than you."

Emmett guffawed at that, and Alice merely gave me a stern look, hopping off the bed, making it creak. "Listen, Bella…Something's wrong," she said, rushing to my side. Her beautiful butterscotch eyes were wide and filled with concern. "With you and Edward. We called Carlisle…There's a phenomenon…I mean, it's not even supposed to happen unless you're both vampires, but you're clearly so much different than most humans…"

I had no idea what she was saying, but it wasn't uncommon for hallucinations to confuse people, I was sure. After all, Edward confused me all the time with talk of heaven and death and how it was all so strange. Maybe this was Alice's shtick.

So, instead of indulging her, I moved past her and into the small, filthy bathroom I had in my room, closing the door behind me. It wasn't even nighttime yet, but I wanted to just…Rest. I was so weary, so exhausted, that I felt like my entire body was lagging behind, working on autopilot and large consumptions of coffee.

"Isabella, I know you did not just shut the door in my face," she sounded indignant.

Ah, well. She'd disappear sooner or later.

But she didn't disappear, not even when I'd finished my shower and changed out of my jeans for bed. She was still in the room, Emmett right next to her, only this time, Edward was there, too.

He looked like he always did these days - dirt-covered clothes, hair caked with mud, eyes the color of the blackest ocean on the blackest nights. He was pacing near my bed, and though Emmett was talking to him, he was paying his brother no mind.

Maybe hallucinations didn't get along with each other. Dispute over territory, whose right it was to drive Bella Swan crazy, and all that.

"Come on, man," Emmett was saying, his voice frustrated and urgent. "Just snap out of this. You're driving yourself insane, and you're driving Bella insane. Snap out of it."

Edward didn't even seem to hear Emmett. The moment I entered the room, however, his head snapped up and he looked straight at me.

"Bella," he breathed, relief dawning on his face. "I've missed you so much…Come here, love."

But I didn't.

I never did.

I couldn't.

We had discovered, very early on actually, that he couldn't touch me. Not really. He wasn't corporeal, after all. How could a figment of my imagination suddenly become hard diamond skin encasing immortal flesh? There was just no way.

So, even as he spread his arms for me to step into, I turned away from him. His face fell, like they did every time I refused, and sad eyes watched as I climbed into bed.

"You're not real," I whispered, my head turned away from him, from Emmett and from Alice. "You're not here."

I closed my eyes against the sudden tears that threatened to fall, my throat constricting so tightly that I had to open my mouth and sucked in a few deep breaths to try and clear it. I burrowed my face, wet with tears now, into my pillow.

_He's not here_.

My broken mind drifted, along with my broken heart and my broken soul, until I myself was no longer in that motel room. I drifted until I found myself staring at Edward once more.

Only this time, we weren't in my motel room, with his sister and brother looking on.

This time, we weren't even in the meadow in a lovely dream - I stopped having those quite a while ago.

This time, we were in a darkened room, the sounds of nature ringing loudly in my ears. There was a tiny window in the small room, mostly boarded up, but even if it wasn't it wouldn't matter - it was darker outside than it was inside.

I looked around for my treasure, finding him curled up where he was always curled up - on the floor against one of the room's wooden walls, knees brought up to his chest, eyes wide open but never seeing anything.

I walked over to him and crouched down next to him, my fingers reaching out to brush back some of that messy, damp bronze hair. It didn't work because whenever I was here, I was the one who wasn't real. I was the one who couldn't touch.

So I sighed, and dropped on my bottom, crossing my legs Indian style as I sat next to him. I placed my elbows on my thighs and cupped my cheeks with my palms, staring at him.

After all, it was my turn now.

* * *

Okay, that was longer than I had intended it to be. It's still a step in the right direction for this story, however, so I hope you're enjoying it.

Please leave me a line or two to tell me if you are - or aren't - if you could. Thank you for reading.

Juliet.


	2. I Let Myself Fall

The Distance Between Us

**Disclaimer:** SM owns it all.

* * *

Edward: I Let Myself Fall

_Three hours after the fact._

I was running, still running.

After having made sure my entire family had left Forks, Washington, with no intention of returning during Bella Swan's human lifetime, I had gone to her, broken her heart - and mine - and then I had ran.

Three hours later and I was still running.

I hadn't told any of my family that I wouldn't be meeting up with them in Alaska once I'd 'broken up with' Bella, as Emmett had put it. Such a juvenile term.

I assumed Alice had seen that I wasn't heading to Denali by now, though I had made her promise not to see anything involving Bella since I'd made the decision to leave her. Of course, my path was no longer intertwined with Bella's.

I was surprised by the painful shock that went through my body at that thought.

I shouldn't be. Despite the human limitations of Bella's emotions, mine were far clearer, far stronger. I had just severed my ties with the only reason I had for existing, after being without her for a century, not even knowing that I needed her, wanted her. Why wouldn't I hurt? Why wouldn't it feel like my insides had been shattered into sharp little pieces of glass?

I had nowhere to go, I realized, as I passed through Ohio. I had absolutely nowhere to go.

I couldn't go to Alaska - family was something I didn't think I could stand at the moment. All I knew was that Carlisle and Esme would be supportive of any and every decision I'd made, Rosalie would be irritated at me for uprooting the entire family, never mind the fact that she and Emmett weren't even supposed to be in Forks anymore since they'd 'graduated high school and were off to college', my brothers would try to get me to move on - impossible, impossible thing - and Alice would just be angry and disappointed in me.

I'd had to remind myself, over and over again when Alice had argued with me, pleaded with me not to leave my beloved, that I wouldn't be the only one losing Bella. Alice would, too, and Bella had become someone very special to my sister's heart.

Still, whatever love Alice had for Bella couldn't possibly rival mine. If it did, she would understand why I'd done what I did. She would understand that despite the pain this would bring to us, Bella would eventually move on and be happy. Be happy as a human, living out a perfectly human life, the way she was meant to.

I took in a deep breath, unnecessary oxygen filling my lungs as I ran through yet another patch of forestry, and continued on my path further and further away from my love.

_I'll just keep running_, I resolved. At some point, I had to stop.

* * *

_Five weeks and two days after the fact._

I did stop.

Somewhere in Canada.

Not because I wanted to, because God only knows Canada was still too close to her - so close that I could still feel the softness of her lips and taste the freesia of her scent.

I stopped because I caught a scent, as sweet-scented as one of our own, yet as bitter as the day I raced against time to reach my Bella in time.

The red-headed harlot, Victoria.

I caught her scent, and found her in Jasper National Park. She had lured away two campers, and she'd drained them dry. She still clutched the dead body of the second camper in her arms, licking away his blood from her lips, when I caught up to her.

She'd spun around, wide-eyed at the interruption, her lip curled over her teeth to bare her incisors at me. When she'd registered who I was, the dead man fell from her clutches, laying limp on the forest floor next to his friend.

"_You_," she whispered, a sort of disgust marring her features. She dropped into a feline crouch, and I matched her movements. "You and the others…You killed my James."

Some masochistic part of me made me grin, a hollow thing that I barely felt, and taunt, "And enjoyed every second of it."

Victoria let out a cry of agony, lunging at me, leaves on the forest floor flying as the wind from her sudden, inhumanly quick movement stirred their stillness. I caught her by the arms before her nails, formed into claws, could reach my face. I threw her away from me, her body crashing into a tree a few feet away. The tree buckled predictably under her strength, and snapped. She wasn't the least bit deterred, already back in a crouch and headed back towards me.

"You murdered my James!" she shrieked in agony, managing to knock my off my feet. She knelt on top of me, her hands on either side of my neck.

But she didn't stand a chance against me, not one on one. I had Jasper for a brother and he was such a good fighter that I couldn't help but learn from his instincts even when we were only play wrestling.

I kicked her away from me, dodging her hands.

"He was going to murder my Bella," I retorted.

Victoria's eyes flashed, and the image of my sweet love popped into her mind, far more ordinary in her mind than Bella was in real life.

Her plan, instantly cooked up right there on the spot, my words the catalyst, flashed through her mind very briefly.

But it was enough for me to catch on. Enough for the anger and the agony and the sheer panic to rise to the surface.

"No!" I yelled, and made to lunge at her.

Victoria snarled, baring her teeth at me, and when I was close enough, she snapped her jaw over my shoulder. I hissed, the pain distracting me long enough for her to push me away.

I stumbled to the ground on my knees, the venom stinging and a scar already forming, but the wound already healed. I looked towards where she was, only to find that she wasn't there anymore.

I rose to my feet instantly, and begun to look for her, fear overwhelming me.

_A mate for a mate_.

It could never happen. It just couldn't.

But despite my fear, and my panic, my entire body was now alive, every nerve ending electrified with one purpose and one purpose only: to keep my Bella safe, even from afar.

Before this, after leaving Bella, I had no reason to exist, no reason to continue on. I was imply biding my time, waiting until it was time to join her in the afterlife. But now, at least for a little while, I had a reason.

I was going to track Victoria down, I was going to kill her and I was going to make sure she never came anywhere near my beloved.

* * *

_Three months four days after the fact._

Victoria wasn't as brainless as I first thought her to be, even if all her thoughts were useless and centering around the deceased nomad she'd mated with.

She had been harder to keep hold of. Easy enough to track, but she kept slipping through my fingers every time I thought I had her. It seemed like that was her ability - to get herself out of situations that meant her demise. Maybe it was some sort of built in radar. I didn't know.

All I knew was that despite the fact that, at the beginning, I had gotten even the slightest spark of excitement at the idea of tracking Victoria down and saving Bella, now I was simply…Agitated. And frustrated. And most certainly losing my patience.

How could I not when things had started getting so hard for me?

Everywhere I looked these days, I'd see Bella. I would be hunting, and I would see her sitting on a branch in the trees, swinging her legs about and smiling at me. I would be in a city somewhere, getting myself a new shirt since my old one had been shredded by a mountain lion, and she would be there, just looking at me. I would be on Victoria's trail, and she would be there, with that same look on her face that she'd worn when I'd left her, accusing me of being the reason she was in danger in the first place, telling me she wished she'd never met me, never fallen for me.

And though that would've been for the best of her safety, the words still ripped through my frozen heart, bringing me to my knees each time.

It never really occurred to me as odd that I was seeing Bella everywhere. I missed her, so very desperately, and my heart longed for her so much that it actually, physically, ached in my chest. I was a vampire, too, with a memory with perfect clarity. It didn't seem odd to me that I would daydream about her.

I had just left Texas several days ago.

I had thought that I was losing Victoria's trail - something that was highly unacceptable - and had been this close to my resolve breaking, to go back to Washington. Not to reunite with Bella, because she still deserved a normal life, but to watch over her in the shadows, to protect her from harm shall it befell her.

I would rather sit by the sidelines, in the darkened shadows, watching as she moved on and grew and fell in love, rather than have her be killed, taken from her life before her time.

In Texas, however, very near Dallas, I caught a lucky break.

A fresh scent.

It was why I was now traveling straight for Brazil, where the scent was leading me to.

I would catch Victoria and burn her if it was the last thing I did. I wouldn't let her harm my angel.

* * *

_Three months, twenty-three days after the fact._

Brazil had been a bust.

It had ended up being a fake trail. I caught on when her scent started growing weaker and weaker by the mile, and it finally stopped in Rio de Janeiro. A pile of clothes. That was what I'd been tracking. A sweater, jeans and a camisole. I had no idea how she'd made the fake trail without another scent mingling with hers, but none of it had been worth the chase.

I panicked, understandably.

I had been tracking Victoria down for weeks, months even. I had been on a fake trail for at least three weeks. Victoria had had plenty of time to head to Forks while I'd been on a wild goose chase.

I whipped out the untraceable, disposable cell phone I'd gotten and dialed Alice's number as fast as I could without breaking the device.

"What?" she snapped, her voice irritable.

I suppose she'd _seen_ me calling and had still been unforgiving of me.

"I need you to check on Bella," I said hurriedly, my words stumbling over each other.

The tone of my voice alerted her, and when she spoke again, she sounded just a tad less hostile. "What? Why?" She paused, then sniffed, "The last time we spoke, you didn't want me to catch even a second's glimpse of her. Now you want me to-"

"Alice, just _do_ it!" I snarled, interrupting her.

I received a dial tone in reply.

Muttering curses underneath my breath, I dialed again.

Alice answered on the sixth ring. "Look, unless you're telling me that you're going back to her, followed by a very long apology to me because you're such an ass, E-"

"Alice, I think she might be in trouble," I blurted out, interrupting her tirade.

Alice fell silent. "Are you sure?" she asked, her tone heavy with worry. "What happened?"

I explained to her my encounter with Victoria, and the chase that ensued. Alice was already checking Bella's future, I knew, the moment I'd mentioned Victoria's name.

"She…" Alice hesitated.

I gripped the tree trunk I was leaning against tighter, indents the shape of my fingers pressing into the bark. "What?" I whispered. "Am I…Am I too late? Is she…? She can't be, Alice!"

"No, no, she's…Well, she's alive," Alice assured me, but there was something in her tone that I absolutely hated. "Sort of."

My eyebrows raised to my hairline and I scowled. "Sort of?" I repeated. "Alice, I don't have time for games."

"No, you have all eternity, you have time for anything," she snapped back. "I mean…She looks like the walking dead, Edward. She looks like a shell of the girl you left behind. She…Look, it's bad, okay? I don't think she's coping with this well."

Something crumbled beneath my hand and I turned my head to see that I had accidentally ripped out a chunk of the tree trunk. I took my hand away, letting the wood fall to the ground. "I didn't ask for a report on her, Alice," I said curtly into the phone. "I asked if Victoria had found her."

"Don't worry, the red-headed bitch won't be there in time to kill her," Alice assured me in a mock reassuring tone. "You'll have done that all on your own miles away from her."

"Just look out for Victoria near Forks, Alice," I snarled before snapping the phone shut. I used too much force, and the phone snapped in my hands.

* * *

_Four months, two weeks after the fact._

I was seeing her everywhere.

And this time…This time it wasn't just little snippets where I'd think I'd seen her in the reflection of a shop window, did a double take, only to see that she wasn't really there. This time, it was much more…Detailed.

This time…She didn't leave me.

I was convinced that she had left Forks and had somehow managed to track me down. If it weren't for the fact that she had appeared to me so suddenly when I had been hiding out in the hollow of a tree in the forests, crouching to see me, I would've believed that.

"Edward?"

There she was, calling to me again.

I had given up on finding Victoria. I knew Alice was keeping track of her through her visions, and I was…I was tired.

I missed Bella, I missed holding her and kissing her and feeling her all soft and warm in my arms. I missed hearing her laugh, the one she was so conscientious about, and I missed seeing that beautiful smile of hers. I missed hearing her speak, telling me she loved me. I missed our time together in the meadow.

I was _this close_, so close, to just abandoning every hard moment I'd worked to stay away from Bella. I was so close to just running back to her. I imagined the reunion so often that I had tens of different scenarios running through my mind. All of them involved her embracing me with open arms as soon as she saw me. I knew that would never happen, even if I did lose my will. I had been a _monster_ to her before I left, first with the party then with the horrendous words I'd said to her in the forest…

"Edward, there you are," Bella's sweet voice called to me again. I saw her, then, walking over to where I stood looking out the small window of the shack I was currently in.

I had hastily built this small shack, high up in the treetops. It was too far into the forests for any human being to pass through, and far too dark, shadowed by large trees, for there to be any light. I had no trouble seeing outside, however, though Bella didn't have the same ability as me.

"I don't know why you stand here, Edward," Bella shook her head at me, even as she stood next to me, so close that I could smell the strawberry scent of her shampoo. God, how I've missed her scent. "You can't see a thing outside."

Even though I knew she wasn't real, that she was likely an over the top figment of my imagination, I answered her anyway. My mind had conjured up a very realistic hallucination of Bella Swan - it would be a waste not to use it. "You can't," I corrected her. "I can."

She laughed, a soft lovely sound I ached to hear in real life. "Oh, yeah," she rolled her eyes at her own silliness. "I forgot."

She turned her body to face me, then, the sweet smile slipping from her lips. For a moment, I panicked. Why did she look so serious? Why did she look so…Was she leaving me? The way I had left her? Was this some sort of revenge?

"Don't," I choked out, reaching for her even though I knew that I would never be able to touch her again. "Don't leave me."

Surprise registered in her eyes, and she stared at me, bewildered. "I'm not leaving you, Edward," she reassured me. "I just…Why are your eyes so dark? Don't you need to go hunting?"

I shook my head, turning my head to look out the window again. "I don't need to hunt," I answered her stiffly. "There's no one here to tempt me."

She raised her eyebrow, tilting her head to the side. I caught a slight look of hurt on her face. "What about me?" she asked, shyness in her tone. "Don't I count?"

"No."

Bella reeled back and started to turn away from me. "You don't count, Bella, because you're not really here," I blurted out before she could.

I didn't want her to leave me. Just because she was merely my imagination, didn't mean that I didn't want her to stay.

Bella gave me a confused look before her expression cleared. "Oh," she nodded knowingly, as though she understood my meaning. "Because this is only a dream."

I chuckled despite myself, though the sound was hollow and mirthless. "Vampires don't sleep, Bella."

"I meant _my_ dream," she clarified. "I'm only dreaming of you…"

I was confused by this. I was fairly certain that this was my reality, and that she was the one that wasn't real. Was I truly going insane?

"It doesn't make sense, though," Bella continued on, murmuring so low that she must've been talking to herself. "I'd have thought that my dream would involve the two of us somewhere more romantic than a run-down shack."

I sighed. "It goes to show just how crazy I've become," I rolled my eyes. "My own hallucination thinks she's dreaming."

Bella merely stared at me. "I don't understand," she said blankly.

I dropped my head back, closing my eyes and rubbing my hand down my face. I released a weary sigh, my shoulders sagging.

"What's wrong, Edward?" I heard. Opening my eyes, I saw that Bella was looking at me with wide, concerned doe eyes. She stepped closer to me. If she were real, my mouth would be overflowing with venom. But it wasn't - just a painful reminder that the real Bella, my Bella, was nowhere near me. "Are you alright?"

She raised a hand, one small, feminine hand, and lifted it to my cheek. Her fingers made to caress my cheek but it was like air was touching me - I couldn't feel it.

Bella frowned. "I suppose we can't touch each other in dreams," she sighed in resignation, dropping her hand.

I moved away from her, suddenly more exhausted than I'd ever been. "Lay with me, Bella," I pleaded, dropping to the floor a few feet away. Bella turned around to look at me, a small smile on her face even as she hesitated. "Come on…I've missed you so much. Lay with me."

She smiled wider at my words, and walked over to where I was. She, too, sat on the floor. We moved, perfectly synchronized, Bella moving until she sat with her back to my front. We both fell to our left, laying down on our sides, my back pressed against the wall. I lifted my arm, placing it around the air where Bella's waist would be.

My eyes fluttered close as I imagined her, all soft flesh and warm body. I could just feel it, as though she was really there with me. I could almost even feel the warmth of her body. My arm never once got tired or moved from the angle I'd cocked it at, as I pretended for hours that she was really there.

When I opened my eyes again, she was gone. Literally gone. I couldn't see her anywhere.

"Bella?" I called out. There was no answer. There was no Bella. "Bella, come back. Please come back to me."

My body shuddered, the pain that I'd felt over leaving her, of being physically separated from my sole reason of existence, multiplied ten fold. It manifested into an actual physical pain, binding me to my spot on the floor. I curled into myself, my limbs tucked to my body tightly, but the pain didn't recede, just grew steadily worse.

After a while, I realized that there was a low, keening voice emanating from my throat, a sound I didn't recognize, mingling with the strangled call for my beloved.

I could feel myself getting light-headed, which I didn't think was possible for a vampire. I was beyond the capability of panic, however, so I let my eyes stare unseeingly at a random spot, letting the light-headedness overwhelm me.

I didn't know what it was, or if there was actually something wrong with me. All I knew was that as I let myself drift, the pain grew number and number until I couldn't feel it anymore. And as I drifted, it was as though I could feel her getting closer and closer to me.

So I allowed myself to drift, and when her presence, her scent, her face grew so strong that I could just taste her in my mouth…I let myself fall.

* * *

So this was just a tiny bit to show Edward being all depressed and how he came to appearing to Bella, at the very end. I'm not really sure who 'appeared' to whom first. Chicken or egg, and all that.

Next chapter moves things along, I promise. It's just going to be one more chapter and an epilogue, with an EXB ending so don't worry. No one dies or anything.

Keep reading, and thank you for your time.

Juliet.


	3. A Hope and A Light to Follow

The Distance Between Us

**Disclaimer:** SM owns it all.

* * *

Alice - Hope and A Light to Follow

I stood next to Emmett, and this…Edward hallucination, or whatever it was that Bella had called him, staring worriedly as Bella slipped into a '67 Impala and drove off.

Emmett whistled appreciatively. "Who knew Bella owned a muscle car like that?" he commented, jerking his thumb in the direction that Bella had drove away in. "I mean, it needs a little work, but…Ya think Rosie might let me get one of those?"

I turned to him and glared. "Focus, Emmett," I snapped, my worry making my tone curt. "Something is seriously very wrong here."

Emmett snorted derisively. "You don't say," he said sarcastically, eyeing the 'Edward' hallucination in wariness.

'Edward' merely stared right back at Emmett. "You're disturbing my peace," he said in a solemn voice. "Why are you here?"

"Dude," Emmett shook his head, as though Edward was being slow on the uptake. "That's the question _we_ should be asking _you_."

Edward frowned at Emmett. "Wha…What do you mean?" he asked, his voice growing duller for a moment, as did his appearance. He flickered back to full focus, like an old television with bad reception flickering in and out of focus. Looking around, he seemed panicked about something. "Bella's not here."

"Uh, yeah, she just left, Edward," I said slowly, unsure what exactly this apparition was. It certainly wasn't a hallucination, of that I was sure. If it was a hallucination, only Bella would be able to see it and Emmett and I were clearly _not_ Bella.

This only served to make him more alarmed. "I have to find her," he whispered, his eyes steely with determination. He was starting to fade, like a ghost. "I need her."

"Edward, wait!"

But he was already gone.

We stared at the empty space for a long moment. Emmett, eyebrows raised all the way to his hairline, looked at me with a bemused expression. "I know vampires are real and everything, 'cuz, uh, _duh_," he said. "But did we just step into the X-Files or what?"

I rolled my eyes, whipping out my cell phone to call Carlisle.

"This is serious, Emmett," I said as I pressed speed dial 2. "You do realize that whatever that apparition was wasn't a ghost, right?"

He nodded, a somber expression suddenly befalling his face. "Yeah, this is weird," he agreed with me.

"More than weird," I argued. I returned my attention back to the call I'd made when I heard Carlisle's voice on the other end. "Carlisle? It's me…I think we have a problem."

* * *

"I think I know what you're talking about, Alice," Carlisle said, after having paused for a moment.

I had told him of our bizarre encounter with Bella and the 'Edward apparition', and it had taken this man less than a second to figure it out.

I drew the cell phone away from my ear to stare at it incredulously for a second. "You do?" I asked into the phone.

"Yes. I researched it a while back," he replied. So he clearly needed a hobby other than researching. "While I was still staying with the Volturi, in fact."

"Oh?"

Carlisle hummed slightly, and I could hear papers rustling as he spoke next. A quick sneak into the immediate future told me that Carlisle was in his study back in our new house in Ithaca, and that he was looking for an old journal he'd written into a long time ago. Preferably with notes on whatever research he'd done on this.

"It's a phenomenon," Carlisle informed me. "Called 'Animus Discidium'. It means 'soul separation'."

"So…Edward somehow managed to separate his soul from his body?" Emmett asked, hearing the conversation clearly with his vampiric hearing.

Carlisle chuckled slightly, though I could sense that he wasn't feeling very lighthearted. "No, not exactly…And it's not just Edward, by the way," he said.

I sucked in a sharp breath. "Bella's doing it, too? But we didn't see…"

Carlisle hummed again. "Yes, well, I suspect that because she's human, during her waking hours, her soul remains in her body. When she's asleep, however…I believe her soul travels to wherever your brother is."

"Explain, please," I urged. "I'm not understanding this much."

"Animus Discidium is a phenomenon that occurs when two vampire soul mates are separated physically," Carlisle begun. "It is extremely rare, however, since sometimes vampires mate with those they aren't necessarily in love with. In all known records, it has only happened once, with a mated pair named Amir and Sahara. Amir was a vampire who had lived his human life in Egypt, and was captured by powerful vampires during the vampire wars in 1653. He eventually, somehow, became a part of the Romanian guard, sometime in the late 1700s. He left and met Sahara in the 1820s. The Romanians were incensed that he'd left, especially considering that he was a very skilled fighter with a very strong telekinetic ability. They sought out revenge, capturing Sahara when Amir's guard was down. Amir tried to penetrate the Romanian army, but they had built their defenses, even had a strong physical shield with them. Amir was slowly going insane, and thought of only one way to save his love - by going to the Romanian's enemies."

"The Volturi," Emmett supplied, as taken by the story as I was.

"Yes," Carlisle replied, a more sorrowful note entering his tone. "Aro and his brothers weren't keen on helping Amir since he had been a part of the Romanian guard. They said that Amir's mental health deteriorated by the day, and soon, he was merely an empty shell, just staring off into space, not responding to anything. Aro told me that one day, Amir's light simply disappeared. His eyes were open, glazed over and unseeing, and nothing anyone would do brought him out of it. He said that he believed Amir just…Stopped existing."

"That's impossible," I countered immediately. "Vampires don't die. Not like that."

Carlisle sighed wearily. "I know that, Alice," he said patiently. "But that was how it was like. Amir became just a shell, and Caius ordered the guard to burn his body. He didn't even scream, didn't even blink, when his body was licked by the flames."

I shared a look with Emmett, wincing at the imagery.

"A few hundred years later, while I was staying with the Volturi, a nomad by the name of Stefan came to the Volturi. He used to work with the Romanians, but he left because they had killed his mate. He wanted Aro and his brothers to kill him, but Aro recognized his power - he was the powerful shield that had kept Amir from getting to Sahara - and had Chelsea sever his ties with his mate so he would stay with the Volturi. Aro, curious, asked Stefan what had happened to Sahara. The events that had unfolded to her were nearly identical to Amir's."

"So they killed her?" Emmett asked.

"Yes. She, too, became an empty shell. They found no use for her and got rid of her. Stefan gave them the date that Sahara was killed - it was the same one that Amir was killed," Carlisle sighed. "Find Bella, Alice. Get her to come with you. Bring her to our house."

I nodded. "What will you do?"

"I'll find Edward."

* * *

Carlisle - The Edge of Reason

"I found a trail," Jasper informed me, moving silently and swiftly, reaching my side. "It's faint. Very faint. Several months old. But I think we're on the right track."

I sighed.

I had taken Jasper with me to South America, to get Edward and bring him back to Ithaca. Emmett was with Alice, the both of them working on getting Bella to our house in New York. Rosalie and Esme had stayed there, as well, though Rose refused to be a part of anything involving Bella.

I loved her, truly I did - she was my first daughter and she held a very dear place in my heart. But her stubbornness held no bounds and it frustrated me from time to time. I didn't think she knew just how severe the situation was, however, because I believed she would be as worried as the rest of us if she did.

Esme was beside herself - not only was she concerned about Bella, but Edward - her 'baby boy' - was in an unstable condition. Reading my journal on Amir and Sahara hadn't helped to ease her fears at all. I hadn't thought that it would, which was why I didn't want her reading it in the first place, but she was a determined fox and what she wanted, she eventually got.

We'd reached Rio before dawn, and we'd been searching the forests for a sign of Edward for eight hours straight. His scent, however, had mostly faded, as though he wasn't even here anymore.

I'd taken to calling Alice several times, just to get her to check, but she had been adamant that this was where Edward was.

"He hasn't left the shack for months, Carlisle," she'd said to me. "The scent has to have faded some. But he's there. Don't give up. You'll find him - I've seen it."

We finally did track him down, his scent the freshest though still faded at the base of a large tree. I looked up to see the shack that Alice had been talking about high up in the tree tops.

Jasper turned to me. "Ready?"

I shrugged. "I should be asking you that," I replied. "Are his emotions hard for you to handle?"

He frowned at me. "No," he admitted. "Actually…There isn't much of anything to feel."

That didn't sound good.

I climbed up first, not answering to Jasper's comment, moving swiftly up the tree trunk until I reached the door of the hastily constructed shack. Edward's scent was definitely the strongest here, the man himself huddled in the corner of the small hut.

I stepped inside the shack, tentatively walking towards him. "Edward?"

He didn't answer, didn't even acknowledged my presence. His body was stock still, curled in a fetal position on the floor. That didn't exactly alarm me, that he wasn't moving - our kind could be frozen in place for weeks at a time without getting tired. The fact that he didn't respond to me in any way, however, did.

I remembered Amir and Sahara's stories, how they had been reported to have become mere shells, nothing more, before they had been killed. I feared, what with the year long separation the two had endured, that Edward had gone through the same thing. I couldn't say the same for Bella, who had been walking about and speaking, albeit incoherently as she'd thought she was insane, but she was human. Amir and Sahara had both been vampires - I couldn't make a factual comparison, not really.

I moved faster towards Edward, Jasper right behind me, and was crouching over his body in half a second. The small shack was too tiny, a little suffocating to be honest, and definitely too cramped for all three of us, but Edward didn't seem to mind.

In fact, as both his brother and I hovered over him, he didn't blink, didn't move, didn't even seem as though he knew we were there.

His eyes, pitch black and hollow-looking, were fixed on a spot on the opposite wall, an impassive expression on his face. He wasn't breathing.

I placed my hand on his cheek, but he didn't respond to that, either. Not a flinch or a blink of the eye. There was only so much that I could do - he was a vampire. It wasn't as though I could start checking for vitals.

I remembered Stefan's account of Sahara's demise very clearly, as though it had happened just days ago instead of centuries ago. I remembered with perfect clarity the unease in the youthful vampire's demeanor as he recounted the story of the woman he had helped to kidnap and, subsequently, murder.

'_Sahara was heartbroken, and it showed in everything. Every scream of agony, every incoherent babbling, every hallucination she had of Amir. Only it wasn't a hallucination. We all saw him. At first, my coven leaders…They thought that Amir had found a way to penetrate their defenses. Security grew tighter. But then Amir and Sahara…They only talked of missing one another, of their love. They never spoke of escaping, of breaking Sahara out. After months…We just sat back and watched, wanting to learn more of this perplexing phenomenon. The day that we found Sahara in her cell, the day we dismembered her and killed her, is forever imprinted in my mind. When we found her, she was limp on the floor. Her eyes were wide open, but she wasn't seeing anything. They were blank, empty, as though there was nothing there. I remembered, looking into her glassy black eyes, and thinking that she looked just like a human who had died with their eyes wide open. It was unnerving to watch, just like everything else Sahara had done since her capture. Finally, when she was deemed a lost cause, we burned her.'_

Stefan's words rang in my ear as I gazed down at my, for all intents and purposes, first son. A memory of him, happy and joyous as he announced to me for the first time that he was truly in love with a beautiful human girl from school named Isabella Swan, floated to the forefront of my mind, and it made me choke to compare the image of him then to the image of him now.

"Oh, God," Jasper murmured as he crouched down next to me. He, too, had read the journal, had known about how Amir and Sahara had 'died' before being burned. "Is he…?" He trailed off, and I started to answer, but Jasper had hissed, jerking his hand away from where he had placed it on Edward's bare arm.

I furrowed my eyebrows together, concerned. "What?" I demanded. Impatience was not becoming of me, but one of my own was hurt in some way. The calmness I usually felt was absent. "What is it?"

Jasper shot me a look, shaking his hand as though he had been electrified. "He's definitely still in there," he told me solemnly. "I can't feel anything from him right now, but when I touched him…All that grief, and agony…It felt like it was crushing me."

My Southern son shook his head. "I tell you - if I hadn't felt that…I would've been sure that this was what a vampire would've looked like after dying of heartbreak."

I was about to respond, to tell him that technically, that _had_ been what had happened to Amir and Sahara.

I didn't want that to happen to Edward, and I was desperate to find a way to fix him. The only theory I had was to reunite Edward and Bella physically. After all, the phenomenon was borne out of the two of them being separated physically. It made sense that the counter-curse would be to reunite them.

Before I could speak up, however, a soft voice interrupted me. I jerked a little, surprised, looking around for the source of the voice.

What I saw made my jaw drop.

Jasper, beside me, felt shocked, as well. I knew because he subconsciously projected it to me.

There, barely a foot away from me, was Isabella Swan.

She stood there, in a pair of cotton sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt - pajamas, I supposed - staring confusedly at me and Jasper.

"Carlisle?" she spoke, calling my name. "Jasper?" She shook her head, as though to clear it. "Oh, this is so strange. I mean, first Alice and Emmett, and now…"

She trailed off before her eyes fell on Edward. A soft smile made its way onto her lips. She stepped forward and knelt down on her knees in front of Edward, sitting in between Jasper and myself. Her side brushed mine, but it was as if she was nothing but an apparition, a ghost, and nothing but electrified air touched my marble skin.

For the first time since we'd arrived, Edward's eyes flickered. He blinked once before his eyes came into focus, fixing his gaze on Bella. The corner of his cracked lips turned up into a small smile.

"Bella…" he whispered, his voice low and hoarse, like a man dying of thirst. I supposed, in a way, he was, if his eyes were any indication of how long he'd gone without hunting.

Bella beamed at him softly, leaning her head down to brush her lips against his smooth cheek. Her lips didn't touch his skin, just brushed over it, like she really was a ghost unable to touch anything corporeal. It was intriguing - and painful - to watch.

"Edward, why are your father and brother here?" she asked him, confusion lacing her words. "I thought it would be just us, like always."

Edward's brows furrowed slightly, though there he still didn't move from his fetal position. "There's no one here," he told her. "No one but you."

Bella giggled slightly. "No, silly. Carlisle and Jasper are here - look," she pointed first at Jasper, then at me.

But, still, even as Edward's eyes flickered to where she had pointed, he insisted otherwise, "There's just you."

Bella sighed, rolling her eyes. "Okay," she said, in a tone that suggested she was just trying to appease him. "Have you gotten up at all today?"

"No."

Bella frowned, and one pale, ghostly hand went up to his hair as though to comb through it. Instead, her fingers sunk through it, not making an ounce of difference on the muddied strands. "I wish we could be together," she sighed sadly.

Edward gave her a confused look. "We are together," he pointed out.

Bella shook her head. "No, we're not," she murmured. "This is just a very bizarre dream."

A dream?

I turned my head to Jasper. "Jasper, call Alice," I instructed in a low voice. "Ask her if Bella is sleeping right now."

He seemed bewildered by my request, but he nodded his head and complied, standing up and walking over by the small, boarded up window and dialing on his silver cell phone. "Alice…?" I heard him say.

Tuning him out, I turned back to the two star-crossed lovers, watching the bittersweet interaction.

Edward was looking at 'Bella' with a hopeful expression in his dark eyes. "Lay with me?" he asked, his voice unusually small.

Bella smiled at him. "Of course," she replied easily. "You know I always say 'yes'."

He sighed long-sufferingly, a desolate look shadowing his features. "I'm still waiting for you to say 'no'," he admitted.

Instead of replying to that, 'Bella' simply moved so that she was laying down next to Edward, face to face. He didn't move to embrace her, or to bring her closer, just smiled a little wider. She, however, lightly traced transparent fingertips over his cheekbones. He closed his eyes and sighed, as though he could feel her.

"Carlisle," Jasper called in a tone far too low for 'Bella' to hear, if she could hear the two of us in the first place.

I stood up from my crouch, feeling uncomfortable as I stared at the two lovers, and walked over to Jasper. "Well?"

"She's sleeping," Jasper confirmed. "Alice said she woke up after a nap earlier, and when she woke up, Edward was there - this all happened before we even landed in Rio."

I pursed my lips in concentration. "And was she awake when we arrived here?" I gestured around us to indicate the shack.

Jasper nodded. "Barely, but she was awake," he recounted what Alice had told him. "She was arguing with Edward's apparition about going to sleep. She fell into slumber just five minutes ago."

"Hmm," I hummed at the back of my throat. "Interesting."

Jasper eyed me curiously. "What is?"

I shot a look over my shoulder at the two 'resting' lovers. "I think they're astral projecting themselves to each other," I said in a hushed whisper. "It correlates with the 'soul separating from the body' theory."

Jasper's jaw dropped a little and his gaze drifted beyond my shoulder to look at Edward and 'Bella' as well. "So what we're seeing is Bella's…"

"Subconscious," I filled in for him. "And earlier, when Edward wasn't responding to us, I think he was in his own version of 'sleep'. He just somehow managed to astral projected himself to her, without going into actual slumber."

"Wow."

"Mm-hmm," I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

Jasper's cell phone chirped all of a sudden, and he looked at it in surprise. "It's Alice," he murmured to me before flipping his phone and putting it to his ear. "Ali…Wait, wait, slow down, I can't understand you."

"She's not going to wake up!" Alice shrieked into the phone, loud enough for me to hear even without the use of my inhuman hearing.

Jasper shared a confused, worried look with me. "Who's not waking up? Bella?" he asked unnecessarily.

"Yes!" Alice shouted into the phone. "At first I thought she was just going to wake up after a few hours. I mean, she went to sleep. People go to sleep all over the world daily. But then, I was flipping through the future, and I saw it. She's not going to wake up. She's in some sort of a mini-coma or something! Carlisle, she's really limp. I tried shaking her awake, throwing water on her face…"

"Slapping her," Emmett contributed in the background.

"Emmett!"

"What! It was an option, okay? It's not like it's unheard of."

"Shut up!"

I shook my head, looking over worriedly at Edward and Bella's astral form. "Alice, where are you?"

"Still at her motel room."

"Bring Bella to the house," I instructed firmly. "Jasper and I will bring Edward home. This has to stop."

Alice agreed, wished us both luck and hung up.

Jasper turned to me, anxiety very apparent on his face. "Will this work?" he questioned in an urgent tone.

I wanted to say 'yes' in a resolute tone. I wanted to be sure of myself, sure that everything would be okay. But I couldn't, and I knew Alice hadn't seen anything definite, either, or she would've been less panicked especially after I'd told her about my plan to bring Edward and Bella together physically.

So I heaved a heavy sigh, and merely shook my head. "I don't know," I admitted in a low voice. "All I know is that it's too dangerous to let this go on for much longer. We don't know when they would reach the stage Amir and Sahara did before they'd been killed. We can't let that happen to them."

As it was, Edward was practically catatonic, even with Bella's astral form right there with him. He didn't move, just stayed there curled up on the floor, staring at her unblinkingly. And she…Well, I didn't know if she would 'die' the same way Amir and Sahara did, simply because she was human and this was a phenomenon that had occurred to only two vampires - excluding Edward. But I had no doubt that, with the way things were going, Bella's fragile human mind wouldn't be able to stand it. She would either go insane or enter a state of shock.

Neither of those things were good options, and neither of those things were something any of us wanted to happen to them.

Jasper nodded seriously. "Of course not," he agreed. "Let's take him."

We moved back towards where Edward laid on the floor. I reached down, lifting him up into my arms. Edward didn't protest, or flinch, or even move. He merely kept his obsidian eyes on where Bella's astral form was.

'Bella' had sat up, watching with sad eyes as we moved further and further away. "You're leaving me," she whispered, just as I was about to reach the door. "Of course."

And that was when Edward started to thrash in my arms, his face darkening into a scowl and animalistic sounds ripping from his throat.

"Jasper, a little help," I spoke through gritted teeth, halting in my tracks in an attempt to restrain Edward. Edward kept struggling in my arms, occasionally getting an arm free to swing in my direction or claw at my face, a feral look in his dark eyes.

Jasper moved forward instantly, the shock on his face replaced by determination. I could feel the calm he was pushing out to Edward, though I knew my depressed son was getting a higher dosage, as he locked his arms around Edward's legs, both of which were kicking furiously.

We managed to wrangle him out of the shack, and down the tree. Once we were a few miles away from the shack, and Bella's apparition was long gone, Edward went limp in our hold.

I looked to Jasper, eyebrow raised in silent question. He shook his head. "It wasn't me," he informed me.

Jasper dropped Edward's legs, and I resumed my previous way of carrying him in a fireman's hold. A glance at Edward's face told me all I needed to know.

His eyes were as blank as they had been the first time I'd seen him again in a year, his face as expressionless.

"Edward?" I spoke softly, even as Jasper and I ran through the forest to get to our rented vehicle. I hadn't expected a reply, and I didn't get one.

Like before, it was as though his body was dead, really just an empty shell, and his mind wasn't fully there anymore.

Edward had gone back to the dark abyss of his mind, immersed in the grief of being parted from his love.

* * *

Alright, so I hope this chapter was marginally better than the last one. I knew I didn't portray Edward in the best way I could - that chapter was sort of rushed. But I do hope I'd made up for it here, and that next chapter - the last one for this short story - will do it justice.

Thank you so much for all of you who have read this story. It was just an idea I had, and not something I wanted to prolong.

For those of you who are confused about the phenomenon, it's basically as if Edward and Bella longed for each other so much that their souls - or their 'astral form', whichever you prefer - left their bodies and went to one another. Bella went to Edward when she was asleep, and Edward went to Bella when she was awake.

If you have any questions, either Google 'astral projection', or PM me.

Thank you so much for bearing with me.

Juliet.


	4. Bring on the Wonder

The Distance Between Us

**Disclaimer:** SM owns it all.

* * *

Edward & Bella - Bring On the Wonder

Alice and Emmett had 'stolen' Bella from her dirty motel room, jumping out of her room's window once it was dark out, with her cradled in Emmett's arms.

Now they were in the beautiful house the Cullens were living in in Ithaca, New York.

Bella was sprawled on Alice's bed, seemingly in the throes of a horrid nightmare as she kept kicking her feet in her sleep, her head lolling from one side to another, and muttering under her breath about how everything was wrong and how Edward was leaving her again.

Nothing anyone would do would wake her. Esme was trying her hardest, though, painstakingly running a cool, wet cloth over Bella's forehead for a few minutes every hour, trying to get her to wake up - or, at the very least, calm down.

Rosalie was off sulking in her room. Although she was seeing firsthand, for a few minutes anyway, how the separation had effected Bella, she didn't care. Or more accurately, she didn't want to care. This was all turning out to be changing far too much in the perfect balance of her family and all she wanted was for things to go back to normal.

Emmett alternated between trying to persuade Rosalie and worriedly hovering over Bella. He was uncertain about how things were going to turn out, and this scared him. If things ended the way they had with that Amir and Sahara couple, then he would not only be losing the chance to have another little sister, but he would also be losing his brother. The first one he'd had since entering this life. No matter how much he'd teased Edward in the past, he liked to believe that they had a bond, a strong one, and it would really hurt him if that were to be gone forever.

_Damn_, Emmett sighed to himself. _I should've fought harder when Edward wanted to leave Forks. It was a stupid idea_.

Alice, sitting on the bed next to Bella, her best friend's hand clasped in her cool one, spoke up. "They're going to be here in a half hour," she informed the others.

Emmett started slightly from where he stood looking out the window.

Esme, squeezing the small towel she held in her hand and wringing it of water, looked up at her daughter. "They are?" she murmured.

Alice nodded silently, her gaze never leaving Bella's face.

Esme frowned as she noticed Alice's less than excited expression. "Alice," she said slowly, lowering the towel and draping it over the rim of the bowl filled with water. "Did you…I mean, are Edward and Bella…Will everything turn out fine? Once they're reunited."

Alice remained silent for so long that Esme didn't think she would answer. She had just picked up the towel again, dipping it in the cool water, when Alice replied.

"I don't know," she whispered, her face falling a fraction more. "I just…I don't know why, but I can't see the outcome. All I can see is Edward and Bella, lying right here on this bed, side by side. They look like they're sleeping, but that's it. After that…It's like I hit some sort of wall."

Esme reached across Bella's prone body to grasp Alice's free hand, her eyes filled with support for Alice. "It'll be alright, Alice," she assured the girl.

Alice lifted her head, then, to look at Esme. Her mother's tone had been so…Certain, as though she had absolutely no doubt in her words. She looked like she believed it, too. It confused Alice. Esme's faith was pretty strong, even at a time like this, when all the evidence pointed in the direction of looming tragedy.

"How can you be so sure?" Alice asked.

Esme shrugged, placing the wet cloth on Bella's forehead once more. "Some things a mother just knows," was her vague reply.

They stayed in silent for the rest of their wait. Half an hour had never seemed so long to the immortal beings.

"They're here," Emmett announced, seeing Carlisle's Mercedes pulling up to the driveway. He'd wanted to go downstairs and meet them, but Carlisle and Jasper were already out of the car, Edward being carried in Carlisle's arms.

It wasn't two seconds later that the three of the men were in Alice's and Jasper's bedroom.

Alice lifted Bella's hand, entwined with her own, and pressed a kiss to the back of her friend's hand. She gently placed Bella's hand on her stomach, and stood from the bed, going over to her husband of over fifty years.

Jasper, looking wearier than she'd ever remembered, greeted her with a soft kiss and his arms wrapped around her waist. They stood together in an embrace as they watched Carlisle walk over to the bed, lowering Edward down on the bed, laying him down next to Bella.

Even Rosalie, begrudgingly, wandered out of her room and into Alice's, wanting to see if anything should happen. _After all_, she argued silently. _If Edward died, I'd still be sad about it_.

A few minutes passed, with absolutely nothing happening. Esme, whose hands were clasped underneath her chin in silent prayer as she watched her son and his love with hopeful eyes, was the only one in the room whose faith was unwavering.

"Maybe we should…" Emmett started to say, but there was suddenly movement on the bed.

Edward let out a sigh in his 'sleep', turning his head to the left so that he was facing Bella. A few moments passed before Bella did the same, angling her head towards Edward.

Six vampires watched, entranced, as Edward's left arm and Bella's right inched closer to one another, their hands finding each other in sleep.

Alice let out a sharp gasp as she watched Edward and Bella's hands intertwined even when they were both unconscious.

With their skin to skin contact, the first form of actual physical contact in over a year, everything suddenly changed.

Slowly, color began to rise in Bella's pallid, waxy skin. A slight pink tinge even grew in her pale cheeks. Her hair, lying limp and oily, suddenly grew shiner, healthier. The cracks in her lips healed.

Edward, too, looked better. His skin was still as pale as ever, but it didn't look as translucent as it had moments before. The bags underneath his eyes lessened slightly, and his lips turned from a gray color to the normal purplish color that vampires' lips usually had.

It was as though they were watching life itself slowly seep back into the two of them, as though they had been the living dead before and had now regained their life force.

Bella moved closer to Edward in her sleep, rolling her body until she was snuggled into him, and his right arm wrapped around her waist, his body turned to hers as well. They looked like a normal couple who had fallen asleep together, even if that just simply wasn't the case.

Rosalie was the first to say anything, the others still too shell shocked at the sudden transformation that had taken place. "Huh."

Nothing else happened for the longest time, even as they stared at the two of them. Finally, an hour after Edward and Bella had been reunited, Carlisle suggested leaving them alone. Who knew when they would actually 'wake up'.

"Perhaps they need to recuperate," he suggested.

Rosalie scoffed, "That's ridiculous. He's a vampire. He's not even supposed to sleep."

Emmett had gently dragged his wife out of the room, throwing a smile at the others as he did, and had whisked her into their room. He was sure everything would be fine now - Edward and Bella both looked better and despite Alice being blind over this, it all looked good. Now all he had to do was distract his wife from her misplaced frustration.

Bella and Edward both didn't rise from their slumber until sunrise the next morning. Bella woke first, Edward following suit just seconds later.

Bella, confused as to her whereabouts, stretched her body, making no move to extract herself from Edward's arms. She looked up at him, eyes wide and brimming with tears, though she didn't look at all surprised to see him there.

She lifted one hand, placing it on his cheek, like she'd tried to do so many times before. Edward, who had been watching her with those same obsidian eyes he'd been sporting for months, closed his eyes, a moan escaping his lips.

"I can't tell you how good it is to be able to touch you," Bella murmured, her fingers stroking his smooth skin.

Edward's eyes fluttered open and he gave her a soft smile. "I can't tell you how good it is to be able to feel you," he replied in an equally soft, intimate voice, his own hand flying to her cheek to gently wipe the tears spilling from her eyes.

They stared at each other, just like that, still wrapped in each other's embrace, one hand on each other's face, understanding swimming in their eyes. They might not know about Animus Discidium, or how exactly they'd ended up on a bed in a room that was far too nice to be in a motel Bella had decided to stay in for a while, but they knew that they were meant to be, and that the hallucinations they had been having weren't really hallucinations.

"Hi," Edward said, sounding strangely shy.

It was the first time Bella had ever heard him sound like that, coy and slightly timid, and it made her want to smile. She wasn't sure if she knew how to smile at this point, but she wanted to. "Hi," she responded in an equally small voice.

There was a pause, a moment where they simply stared at each other, eyes raking hungrily over one another as though they had been deprived the privilege of seeing each other for far too long.

And, in a way, they had.

Hallucinations. Apparitions. Astral forms…

None of those were enough.

Bella swallowed, remembering the crushing pain that had enveloped her for over a year due to his disappearance from her life.

Edward must've seen the pain in her eyes, because the small smile on his face dropped instantly. "Bella…" he whispered.

"You left me," she accused, tears stinging her eyes once more.

Edward sighed, shutting his eyes and squeezing them tightly for a moment. He felt all the weariness he'd been suppressing suddenly crashing down on him, the mental exhaustion wearing him out more than he cared to admit.

"Yes," he replied unnecessarily, his eyes slowly drifting open. He gave Bella a remorseful look, his own onyx eyes swimming with venom that would never fall. "I regret that most soundly."

"I know," she sighed, looking as tired as he felt.

"I love you so much, Bella."

At that, a small smile flickered on her lips. "I know that, too."

Edward leaned forward, brushing a kiss to Bella's forehead. The burn in his throat was impossibly strong, though he embraced it as punishment for his wrong doings concerning Bella. He wanted to kiss her, properly on the lips, but he wouldn't be doing that until he's had a chance to hunt and regain his control.

Nothing, however, and no amount of thirst would ever make him covet her blood anymore. He was in no danger of being hurt by him, not after the hell they'd just went through. She was his everything, and she'd be damned if he'd let anything happen to her.

Edward slowly sat up, the arm around her torso tightening slightly to raise her to a sitting position opposite him. He brushed back the tangles of her hair, smiling softly at her and watching as she blushed, a pang of nostalgia running through him as he realized just how much he missed her human reactions.

"I suppose…That we need to talk."

* * *

This, for me, is the perfect ending.

Remember, that in 'The Distance Between Us' universe, Bella had gone without contact with her parents ever since she'd left Forks after seeing Edward's apparition that first time.

If I continue this story, it would just be a repetitive thing with Edward and Bella realizing they can't be apart, Bella wanting to be changed, Edward being morose about things, maybe a reconciliation between Bella and her parents, Victoria's reappearance and demise…I might as well just be rewriting the series, with a few twists and turns here.

So I leave it at this, where we know that EXB will get their happy ending, leading a happily ever after sort of eternity together. Whether they have a hybrid child or not is up to your imagination.

I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this story. Thank you so much for your time.

Juliet.


End file.
